ASIAN AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION

2008 ANNUAL CONVENTION

August 13, 2008
University of Massachusetts, Boston
100 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston, MA 02125

“Interdisciplinary Approaches to Resisting Ethnocentrism,

Racism and Intersecting Oppressions:

Practice, Research, Theory, and Community Interventions”

Conference Schedule

Doris F. Chang and Grace S. Kim, Conference Co-Chairs

Co-sponsored by the University of Massachusetts Boston, South Cove Community Health Center, the Asian Mental Health Team of the Cambridge Health Alliance, and
 the Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence

KEYNOTE ADDRESS

• Rajini Srikanth is Associate Professor of English and affiliated Faculty in Asian American Studies at the University of MassachusettsBoston.  She is Past President of the Association for Asian American Studies. Her research and writing interests include Asian American Studies, Race and Literature, Pedagogy and Multiculturalism, Native American Literature, and Asian American and Middle Eastern intersections.  She is the author of The World Next Door: South Asian American Literature and the Idea of America and White Women in Racialized Spaces: Imaginative Transformation and Ethical Action in Literature.

AAPA 2008 CONFERENCE SESSIONS

INTERACTIVE SESSIONS

        The purpose of this interactive session is to call the field of Asian American studies and psychology to address the sexuality of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) women. The presenters will use a feminist analysis (Worell & Remer, 2003) to explore the impacts of colonization, patriarchal values, and immigration on sexuality in AAPI women’s lives. The focus will be on identifying both challenges and opportunities for research methods seeking to explore AAPI women’s sexuality. Through this exploration and analysis, the presenters will make recommendations for future research and practice on this topic.

        South Asians experience racism and discrimination in a way that is unique among ethnic minority populations (Bhatia, 2007). This session will explore (a) racism as it is experienced by and within the South Asian community in the United States; (b) the role played by variables including country/region of origin, racial identity development, religion, generational status, and gender; and, (c) the resultant coping strategies employed within the community. This interactive workshop will feature an overview of the extant literature and theory regarding the South Asian experience of racism, followed by an in-depth discussion with relevance to researchers, practitioners, and educators alike.

        The beginning of therapy is an opportune moment to understand how race and ethnicity influence clients’ daily lives and to identify interventions relevant to clients’ ethnic identities.  This session offers specific techniques to account for differing stages of racial/ethnic identity when addressing racism, stereotypes, and oppression among clients of color. Facilitators will also discuss difficulties related to race and ethnicity that are frequently encountered by students of color. Attendees will participate in role plays to practice techniques including validating clients’ experiences of racism, reflecting clients’ ambivalence surrounding racial/ethnic identification, and using self-disclosure as a tool to enhance the therapeutic alliance.

        Most studies on LGBTQ individuals tend to assume a “universal experience” without recognizing the influences of race and culture on one’s experiences. This interactive session focuses on the experiences of LGBTQ-identified Asian Americans, discussing how race and cultural values may impact their coming out processes, identity development, community involvement, and/or experiences in mental health treatment. Utilizing both experiential and didactic techniques, culturally-sensitive counseling techniques will be discussed in hopes of promoting positive mental health for this population.

        Asian American Studies (AAS) has historically centralized Transformative Education (TE), empowering students to become active agents in challenging social structural racism.  In this interactive session, we begin by highlighting the major goals of TE.  As faculty/instructors in Psychology with strong connections to AAS, we discuss our teaching strategies for meeting these goals in the context of four psychology courses (Introduction to Psychology, Infancy and Child Development, Adolescence, and Asian American Psychology).  We believe the integration of curricular and pedagogical strategies from both AAS and Psychology (traditional and multicultural) has much to offer for meeting the goals of TE.

SYMPOSIA

    Mental health disparities among Asian Americans exist in part due to systemic biases embedded in the U.S. healthcare system and reflected by a lack of culturally competent treatments. To better address this disparity, this symposium presents three NIH-sponsored, culturally-adapted empirically based mental health interventions for three distinct Asian American groups. The first presentation describes a pilot trial of parent management training for reducing risk of abusive parenting and child conduct problems among high-risk immigrant Chinese families. The second presentation illustrates a clinical trial to test the efficacy of culturally-adapted cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) vs. standard CBT for Chinese-Americans in community mental health settings. The third presentation describes an intervention to counter internalized stigma among Chinese immigrants with schizophrenia by targeting specific stigmatizing cognitions via CBT and implementing family-based psychoeducational sessions to counter within-family stigma. Our discussant will integrate the approaches presented and discuss generalizable principles in implementing future culturally-adapted interventions for Asian Americans.

    This symposium focuses on multiculturalism in educational settings, shedding light on how multiculturalism informs our understanding of outcomes for ethnic minority youth and the implementation of diversity initiatives in the training and practice of psychologists. The first presentation examines the role of cultural and relational factors in accounting for the influence of multiculturalism on subjective happiness. The second presentation investigates the relationship between multiculturalism and academic achievement among Asian American and Hispanic youth, including potential mediators. The third presentation provides a model for and the results of implementing diversity initiatives in a psychology graduate program. Implications for psychologists, educators, and ethnic minority communities are discussed.

    In the last few decades, research on the psychosocial issues of Asian Americans has proliferated and made substantial advances in terms of theory, methodology, and societal impact. In the spirit of continuing this upward empirical trajectory, senior scholars from the Asian American Center on Disparities Research identify some areas of relatively new research and share their perspectives on some promising strategies that can catalyze empirical work in these domains. In particular, the presenters will discuss these strategies as they relate to three topical areas that historically have not been the focus of cultural diversity studies:  Forensics, genomics, and evidence-based psychological practices.

    After the attacks on September 11, 2001, the media displayed images of suspected terrorists -- people with “Islamic-sounding” names, those who “appear” Muslim, and men who wore turbans. There was an immediate backlash against particular groups in the U.S. in the form of racial and religious profiling, stereotyping, discrimination, racial slurs, and violence. This symposium will include presentations on two Asian religious communities, Sikh and Muslim, who have been most affected. Drawing from personal experiences, research findings, and community interventions, these presentations will include an overview of each religious community, the experiences of these communities, coping mechanisms, and “best practices” to work with these groups.

    This symposium aims to understand how cultural contexts shape unique experiences and internalization processes of racism among Asian Americans as a group, as well as within specific Asian ethnic groups. The first presentation reviews a new measure of the Internalization of Model Minority Myths and its psychological correlates among Asian American college students. The second presentation examines the meditational role of racial identity in the link between perceived racism and psychological distress among a community sample of Chinese Americans. The final presentation focuses on unique forms of racism experienced, coping process, and its relations to self-esteem among Asian Indians using a mixed method approach.

POSTER SESSION